My desperate need to keep sane led me to start this blogging journey and Oh My God I LOVE IT!!

Saturday, 24 July 2010

If you've subscribed to the blog via RSS the move won't affect your updates, however I am not sure it is the same if you have added it to your Google Friends Connect. It might be worth checking that you have received the latest posts to ensure it is still updating.

Hope you like the new blog and that you will keep following or I will miss you...

Monday, 12 July 2010

This morning, not long after I posted this I ended up rushing in the car, with my amazingly calm and collected brother in law, while I was in floods of tears because Victor fell backward from a sofa and cut his head...

I am not sure what made me so emotional. The fact that my baby was bleeding, the fact that he developed an egg the size of a golf ball straight away or the fact that the doctor, quite alarmingly, warned me of the symptoms that might develop in the next WEEK, and will mean that I'll need to rush to hospital... Luckily he didn't need stitches because the skin glued itself back together and the doctor didn't want to touch it to avoid more bleeding.

The love you feel in these circumstances is frighteningly strong with the need to suck this pain out of his little body. I wish I could wrap him so tight with the hope that it grows a divine protection around him making him untouchable...

If anyone wanted to know what "chaos" mean you would find the meaning right here, where I am. We have arrived at my mum's in France on Thursday and as always chaos is a daily occurence. Chaos is something you learn to live with rather than trying to escape from it. Five children are running around screaming loudly. There is always one repeating over and over again that he doesn't want to eat what is on offer. Or one who keeps pressing that button on a toy that makes it bip and bip and bip... And while you are busy telling the first one that "You eat this or NOTHING AT ALL!" and ask the other one to "STOP pressing this F***ING button!" another one climbs every chair in the house and risks us a trip to A&E.

While all of this is happening there is an adult trying to watch TV and in an attempt to blank the noise the children are making, turns the sound up so loud that we might as well mime to each other if we don't want to damage our vocal chords to communicate.

Breakfast is stressful and dinner is killing. The calm is only restored when the children are all sleeping soundly and you go to bed knowing that you will have to deal with it everyday until you return home...

Home is not here anymore. Home is now away from here.

Why do I always forget that this is the reality and why do I live in the illusion that it will all be nice and relaxing because we have the good weather, their cousins and a pool...?

My darling husband left yesterday evening and he left me here on.my.own. Nearly four weeks without seeing him... four weeks in this madness...

Friday, 09 July 2010

I can’t even bear saying these words. Two years old is when you stop counting in months. You rarely hear anyone saying “he is 28 months old” right? So could this mean the end of babyhood? Apart from these gorgeous plump cheeks, there isn’t much left of babyhood in you… Oh and the dummies, you are still addicted to dummies so I bet that makes you still a little bit of a baby then. When I say addicted, I MEAN addicted! You even go to your brother at night and steal the one he has in his mouth. When we come to the room, because obviously your brother is rather peed off with you, we find you lying on your bed with one in your mouth and one in each hands and laughing your head off.

You love your wellies, so much so that I am wondering how you are going to feel when they won’t fit anymore and at the rate your feet grow it won’t be long…

You are learning words. Lots of them. For example the other day you hit me on the leg and told me to "hurry up" because I was slow serving your milk.

I sometime feel guilty that I am not doing enough with you, like taking you to playgroups or spend more time playing with you. You see life is rather unfair for the second child, you tend to become a “follower”. Whatever activity your older brother is doing, you have to fit around so I guess that’s why.

This year hasn’t been easy every day for us. We had lots of moments when I thought the crying and the tantrums would never end, but lately, it is like we have come out at the other side of the tunnel. You are cheerful and happy most of the time. You are so easy going.

You are very independent too. You can play for ages on your own, although your favourite partners are your Brother and E the lovely girl next door. You adore her and you can spend hours looking through the hole in the fence at the back of the garden calling her. She is 14.

This week we went into Elliott classroom a couple of times and you were so happy there, you didn’t want to leave. You are due to start pre-school next January but as you looked so confident there, I asked if there was a chance you could start earlier and it seems a possibility.

I have been dreaming of having some extra time and now that it is almost happening I have a knot in my stomach. My baby is no longer one. I am no longer the mum of a toddler and a baby, I have two little boys and I miss having my babies. Life is at a corner for all of us with you growing up so quickly and I just wish I could have more baby years ahead, but that’s not the way it goes.

Nothing lasts forever apart from this unconditional love I have for you. You are and will always be my wonderful Victor, my amazing blond boy with the cheeky grin and the funny personality. I love you more than word could say and I wish you a

Monday, 05 July 2010

When I was growing up I remember my mum collecting all the magazines about interior design and gardening. She still is obsessed with her garden. She can spend hours planting, trimming and do all the stuff a garden needs and you know what, it bores me silly. I hate gardening. I want a nice garden but I lose patience within 5 minutes of being on my knees stirring soil.

I have all the stuff a girl needs to garden though: the pretty flowery gloves and all the rest. I bought them following a huge impulse to become a gardening queen. I was dreaming a lovely flowers growing in my garden and especially tulips (my favourite ones). I lost all interest in it the minute I noticed that all my lilies had been decapitated by my sons... why bother...

Anyway I have been advised to stay away from the garden and just stick to putting the washing up to dry or lie on lounger when I step outside. Actually I have been clearly requested to stay away from any green living stuff as the minute I lay my hands on them they die! I already explained this in the past when I found myself amazed that I had three LIVING plants in my house. They have all died since then, due to excessive watering and being exposed to the sun at the wrong time of the day...

Lately I have also pulled the mint Craig has been trying to grow for a few months thinking it was weed and emptied a whole bucket of water with cillit bang on the potatoes he is growing at the bottom of the garden.

If only I was the only one but even the dog is a disaster in the garden and the cause of terrible lawn problems we are having! Her incessant peeing on different areas of the garden resulted in a very patchy lawn and this following a whole weekend that Craig spent digging, turning soil and laying new lawn...

Maybe we should purchase an allotment for Craig's next birthday, a place where both the dog and I would be banned...

Just a note - I have a "Cybermummy" post brewing, but until then, I wanted to say a huge thank you to the organisers (Susanna, Jen and Sian) and of course Huggies for sponsoring me and other great bloggers to attend this FABULOUS event!

Friday, 02 July 2010

Especially one who has just TWO obsessions in life: balls and wellies??!!

Victor will be two in a week and I have been scratching my head silly to think of what to get him. It has to be compact enough to take to France and not something that he will discard in 3 seconds because it is not round or he can't put his feet inside!

Honestly does he really need a present? Would it be really scrooge like if we didn't get him anything? It is not as if he had NO toys! I mean he has TONS of toys, and honestly the house is about to burst with all these toys.

How about I wrap an empty box, snap a few shots while he is trying to rip the paper off and then let him play with the box? Everyone knows that children this age have far more fun with a box than with its content. Of course I need to take some picture of his party or he might hate me when he realises that Elliott has photos of his second birthday but he hasn't.

Saying this he might not. After all he is a boy, which eventually will lead to becoming a man which means that he will lose all abilities to over-analyse. Over-analysing is what women know how to do and do all the time.

So he might not even notice that he doesn't have photos of his second birthday and therefore won't have a clue that there weren't any presents either.

Let's say that I take the photos, he will need to see photos of the presents. If there isn't any then he might book himself a therapist to get over the idea that we didn't love him enough to get him a crap piece of plastic for his birthday.

Wednesday, 30 June 2010

Lately I have been working on my “Wordpress move” and while I was tidying up posts, categorizing them and taking the time to read some of them I made the decision to introduce a new feature to this blog, “Month by Month” where I am going to talk about our latest news and the latest events in my boys life. So here goes the first one…

It is already the end of June and we are counting down the days to our French holidays now. It is the first time we are going to be away for such a long time, away for six whole WEEKS! I am having mixed feelings about this but mainly I am looking forward to “hang out” with my mum and sister. When you are living away from home, you realise how good it is to have your mum round the corner. Sometime all you need, is to pick up the phone and say you are coming round for coffee and although this seems like one of the most basic and simple thing to do, it is worth gold when you are miles away from home.

The other thing I can’t wait to do is laugh with my sister. Only with her I can share the stupidest of jokes and nearly wet myself with laughter. How I miss this when I am away from her. Six weeks, this means that we will have plenty of time to share lunches, clothes and gossips! Probably some arguments too but that’s what sisters are for.

How lucky it is for Elliott and Victor to spend a long holiday with their cousins? All in the same house, running riot in every corner and driving us nuts! But how lucky is this? Think of all those holiday memories they will gather through the years: the late nights jumping on the beds and refusing to go to sleep, the fun in the fields, the ice creams shared at snack times, improving their French every year…

I suppose all of this makes the long distance with Craig bearable. Jeez, when we meet again after 4 weeks it will be like meeting for the first time and we might even experience the first love twinges all over again!

Elliott is now in his last week at pre-school and will start a new one next September. I feel a bit mean that he is leaving early because he has been rehearsing a play that he will not attend. I am sure he will forgive me and with his notion of time at the moment I can lie as much as I like, not that I encourage lying, of course not... not all the time anyway.

Since we were suppose to fly to France in April and were unable to because of the ash cloud, he has been asking to go to “Nanou’s house” every.single.day! He wakes up from his naps and say “Let’s go to Nanou’s house now!”, so we started introducing the number of sleeps left, because honestly the tantrums that follow “not yet darling , not yet” drives me nuts!

It is amazing how much he has grown lately. He is now sleeping without pull-ups and asked for it. Not one morning or afternoon he's woken up wet and he asks at night to go to the toilet if he needs to.

He dresses himself too and properly! Apart from yesterday when I realised that his pants were put in rather interesting way that I couldn’t even describe…

Victor has gone through quite a lots of changes too and one of the most significant one is that he is sleeping in his big boy bed. We were not ready for it and when I say “we” I mean him and I, but we had to. One evening he felt out of his bed headfirst and ended up with a huge bruise on his cheek. We knew then that ready or not, there was no alternative, we needed to remove the bars. Hellish evenings followed this event. He definitely wasn’t ready to get into an open bed and spent hours sometimes before falling asleep and most of the time we had to put him in his travel cot to settle him (only bed he couldn’t climb out of). But it seems to have happened all in a sudden. He now goes to sleep fairly easily all by himself which a major improvement.

He is a real little chatterbox and says lots of words which makes our life so much easier and reduced the tantrums a lot. He is such a happy little boy who loves laughing.

He is so agile and can jump from the sofa standing up and steadying himself better than Elliott can. He loves balls, actually he is obsessed with balls and has not far from ten balls in the garden, small to big ones!

Lately Elliott and Victor have started to really play together and invent world of their own. The two brothers really love each other and watching them play makes me feel amazing. They are amazing kids!

Monday, 28 June 2010

I was given this key ring by Craig following an event few years ago when I lost my keys. I looked everywhere for them: the shelf in the kitchen where I used to dropped them on, the bottom of the hundreds of bags I had, the laundry basket in case they fell out of a pair of trousers…

After a few days it was obvious, they were gone. Lost forever.

So I had a new set cut and when I came home later that day, I found them… on the key holder in our entrance hall... Obvious place, you will say. Well, not if you don't ever use the key holder. Hence the key ring "speak slowly, I am blonde" because apparently blondes do that ALL the time !

Craig used to constantly remind me to put them there so it was obvious that I wasn't going to do it. So it is more likely he put them there after finding them on the shelf in the kitchen and therefore CONFUSED MY BRAIN. Since then I have had that key ring on my set of keys that he "lovingly" gave me…

Not so long ago, I added a comment on Sally’s blog post at Who’s the Mummy? where she talks about leaving her keys on her front door, something I do at least once a week at least. I don’t know how it happens but after making sure I get the kids, the bags and the buggy inside, whilst preventing the dog from stepping outside I leave the keys on the door…

I usually have them back when a nice neighbour or the community officer knocks at the door and gives me a lecture of how dangerous it is that I leave my keys on the door, blah blah blah…

My answer is always to smile and be utterly grateful they saved my life. Usually when they see the size of the dog trying to barge past me to sniff their items of clothing or the sandwiches in their bag, they understand that I don’t really risk much. Some malicious person trying to open my door when he is not invited, would probably swear and run when Nala moves towards him. Just saying.

This morning I did something much better and took it another level though. When I usually leave the keys outside while I am inside, this time I left the keys on the door not closed properly and left the house for the preschool run…

Its only when I started rummaging through my bag after drop off that I realised:

“F*CK!! B****CKS!! TRIPPLE B****CKS!!!” No time to chat, time to RUN HOME!!!

I had horror visions as I was running pushing the buggy:

I am going to go home and someone will be dead in my lounge, eaten by the dog.

OR

I am going to get home and Nala will be wandering out in the street while someone is emptying the house (more likely).

OR

I am going to die of a bloody heart attack running in flip flops, pushing a buggy, under 30 Degrees Celsius, without training and with a very high level of stress (most probable ending).

While I was running I called our neighbour who by luck was just round the corner and managed to get back before me to save my keys, my home but most importantly my dog and my heart!

So all I have to say is that I might never do it again (and can't promise) but thank god I have great neighbours!

Look is something that we are all attached to, some more than others I give you this, but if we are truly honest we all want to look good and we all have ideas of what it should be like "to look good".

Now this is the scary bit…

As human being we form some of our values and beliefs based on what we hear, feel and see.

So imagine now: You are a young girl who constantly sees girls described as beautiful because they have long peroxide hair, legs no thicker than matchsticks and bones sticking out everywhere.

Imagine that you hear regularly that these girls are attractive, beautiful and successful.

Imagine now how a young girl would feel if she doesn’t fit in that image. Her teenage years might not be too kind to her and her puberty might give her curves that she doesn’t really want. What if she hears friends or family telling her that she needs to improve her look based on these magazine standards.

What do you think will happen to this lovely, gorgeous, young girl? Confidence crash? Surely. Psychological damages? Maybe. Health problems or eating disorder? Highly likely.

What is very dangerous in our society is that no-one highlights the fact that the photos they see everyday are being edited, that the designers hire the skinny models because everything fits much better on a “hanger” than on curves (without being disrespectful to the models of course). They don’t know that these designers are far more interested in showcasing their art and if they could have fake mannequin walking a catwalk they would.

It is time that we show these young ladies that it is ok to be bigger than the models they see in magazines or on catwalks. That you can be size 14 and glam!

This is why we should see more campaigns and magazines like essentials Magazine involved in promoting the glamorous and healthy rather than the skinny and ill-looking!

Calling all real women - whatever your size, shape, height, or age essentials magazine needs you! If you would like to appear in a glossy women’s lifestyle magazine this is your chance to shine! Simply visit www.goodtoknow.co.uk/essentials for further details on how to enter, and follow the campaign on our Facebook and Twitterpages…we can't wait to hear from you.